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The small chip of ice sliding easily as it was drawn across dry, cracked, parchment-like lips caused no hint of reaction. Well not from the unconscious man/god/alien person anyway. The big blond guy cradling their sorta-maybe prisoner had reacted to the sight of the melting ice-cube with a worried sound. " He is fevered and requires much cooling." One big blunt callused hand that looked far more suited to swinging that large stone war hammer than easing another's illness carded through lank black hair with tender reverence. They had a Soul Bond there. One that was mauled and bleeding from having been violently severed but still there.
Steve Rogers clenched the handgrip tighter unable to take his eyes away from the sight of the warrior tending to his recovered lost love- no matter how hard he wanted to. He shouldn't be staring. It was rude and ill mannered of him. He had no right to sit there and uselessly watch another's pain...Bucky. Bucky, I'm sorry. I let go. How could I have let go! I lost you-
A slight sound from the cockpit pulled him from becoming lost in the dark spiral of emptiness inside him where once (seventy years ago?!) his soul had held strength and love and life. When Steve turned to the sound he found that Mr. Coulson was looking directly at him. Not like before in that embaressingly worshipful silly manner that Steve so hated people acting like around him when he had never actually done a single thing that would have deserved anything close to that level of praise. Praise that always should have gone to the people who had been the real glorious ones people like the members of the Howling Commandos, Peggy and Howard,... people like Bucky. The man Steve was now looking at could have been a different person entirely from the one he had met before when they had both so embarrassed themselves. This Coulson was a blank stone slate of a person all business and calm competence. Just like the woman seated next to the older agent. Their pilot differed in that under her own blank mask she had eyed Steve in a odd manner that finally belatedly clicked in his head as being as though he was a weapon offered by a suspiciously untrustworthy source that she was none the less going to give a chance anyway. In the reflection of her eyes he began to translate many of the rights, and truths, and ways he had always so proudly stood for and believed to be of the greater good and better/best for any/all people- had been examined and observed only to be judged as having been found in conclusion to be nothing but lies and wrongs of the stubbornly misguided. To her he was the sort of legend that was not only not a hero but who was what heroes rose up against. Only her trust in Coulson, his abilities, and urgent desperation, allowed her to accept him being there. It upset him that he realized this now. And that he had been so lost in his own misery that he hadn't noticed sooner. He should have. Their countries were bitter rivals in his time after all. He'd just assumed that- 'That what? That the world would have taken your opinion as the only one that mattered? That your way was the only way? How could he honestly claim the right to stand up for what he believed in if he turned around and denied others the same options?
And there was another thing about those two even though Agent Romanov and Agent Coulson didn't really say anything or even actually show it outwardly where others could see. But there was something in the way they both 'didn't' react to eachother's close proximity with the attention they did to any other person's nearness. There was also the mostly unspoken conversation the two had shared when Steve and the others had reboarded with a newly acquired Norse god of thunder, and evidently alien prince, carrying their now comatose target. Who was the god/alien Loki, and Thor's husband, which Steve thought best not to question and just ignore it as yet another one of those strange things about this future reality he was now living in. Super Soldier hearing had caught the short whispered mostly unworded exchange indicating they were evaluating the potential condition of others (mainly someone named Clint) when a quick, and then more thourough, examination of their acquisition( if you wanted to call him that) reveled those blank half-lidded eyes were glowing a sickly grayed-blue and that limp body was covered in the kinds of marks that Steve remembered seeing on those who had been tortured and experimented on in the prison camps..
The Stark Family's Butler/ Majordomo for certain hadn't been with them when they'd headed for Germany but had still somehow been there waiting for them with the two SHIELD agents after the fight. Stark had been plainly planning on flying back on his own until that moment, thereby leaving just as abruptly as he'd joined them, but the sight of Mr. Jarvis there had him instead strolling up the ramp in much that same casually lofty manner that Steve remembered from watching Howard( and he was still having trouble with that one since he couldn't even envision the idea of Howard having gotten married and had a kid let alone there now being a fully-grown grandson! The flying suit thing the man was wearing therefore got demoted into the more believable thing on top of all that ).
Mr.'call me Tony' Stark had removed his helmet but had kept the entire rest of his robotic armor on. It hadn't give one the impression that the man was unmasked- in fact it made Steve feel weirdly like the animatedly boisterous human face was the fake and that under it was actually Iron Man's mask. The suit was sopossedly partially- sentient after all according to the files that SHIELD had on him/them( files that were filled with mostly frustrated reports of how uncooperative difficult Stark was when it came to getting information from/about him). Stark had also spent most of their trip back talking into the thin air to himself, but where presumably there was some kind of unseen communications device, reassuring a bunch of different people. "- I promise! Not a single scratch! Awww, Pep, don't- .." and " Yes talked! Jeeze, Rhodey, you make it sound- Nope, no fighting- okay it may have looked a little like- you make it sound like-!" had an intimate edge (and the same cheerfully lying his ass off approach that soldiers in dangerous positions used when trying to reassure worried loved ones back home that they weren't in as much danger as they actually were) that made Steve give him the courtesy of at least trying not to overhear the private conversation. Where escalating hostile confrontations with Super Soldiers and gods/aliens hadn't seemed to make the man even blink, let alone actually flinch, Tony Stark's spirit none the less seemed to writhe and thrash( to the perceptions of all that could sense the links between attached souls at least) in almost physical helpless desperation with the need to be able to ease the emotional pain coming from what were clearly his fully binded Soul Bond Mates.
At one especially unexpectedly surprising point his voice even took on a gently soothing parental tone with someone. Even though all information on him was clear in his complete childlessness.
Steve had been the one to fetch the first-aid equipment. But it had been instantly clear that Mr. Jarvis had the better knowledge so Steve followed the agelessly-old/ agelessly-young looking being's lead and then got out of the way.
Stark didn't leave the white-haired man's side. Even as the talkative brunet held those phone conversations his fingers danced and spun over the tiny mechanical workings of things he gathered up off/ out of here and there from their surroundings as he went and weaving together who knew what with the same dexterous grace as the magic being performed alongside his technological feats. Facts and stats about the natural temperatures of Ice Giants (extremely cold) and Agadir, the types of tech used by Thanos, and tons of other information was batted back and forth between the three working on Loki and a couple of doctors, thanks to a multi-way speaker-phone, that were waiting fore them at SHIELD's headquarters.
By the time the jet was in sight of the hover-carrier (so much more impressive than that flying car had been) they had by group effort brought the fevered individual's temperature down to something Thor was reassured to be not imminently dangerous and the rest of the fellow's injuries given battlefield treatments. Mr. Jarvis had seemingly wilted from his efforts to heal his patient but was also looking less worried.Tony had one strong red and gold forearm braced under the frailer arm in support. The quiet respect and protectiveness that radiated in every line of the inventor's stance transformed the wealthy genius, who reportedly didn't actually like to be touched ( and how on earth did that make sense if he was a notorious playboy?), into the very image of some fairy-tale knight. When Steve handed over the fruit/vitamin drink, that the weary magic user was in clear need of, the small smile Tony rewarded him with still had shields to it but was softer and real. And all for a kindness being shown to one that the rich man clearly cared deeply for. His own face warmed in reaction.
It made the ice inside him crack and something warm and new began to unfurl in a part of him that he had thought was dead. He didn't want another soul bond, not after having lost Bucky, but he wasn't really liking the way making sure that wouldn't happen seemed to be affecting his judgment.
'Soul Bonds don't make themselves, Steve. They require effort and care. But first you must respect and accept other people for who they are. Just like with the layers of the realities you need to look carefully or you won't see what is actually there.' Though she had been a tiny and frail wisp of a person for as long as he'd known her his mother had never hesitated teaching his all she could. She and Mrs. Barnes had also never shied away from pointing out the importance of knowing no one was without faults. Steve had always been one for snap judgments...but this, and these people, now began to feel far too much like one of those times that he'd been too hasty in making his conclusions...
So now what?